After getting married, I took a second job at Wal-Mart as a third-shift stocker in order to provide for my wonderful new wife and myself; to feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, keep a roof over our heads, and provide for any other essentials that the aforementioned categories may not necessarily cover. E.g. soap.
Having never worked in a grocery or retail shopping center before, the new vocation proved to have a good number of intimidating challenges in *ahem* “store” for me. Figuring out how to reload a pricing gun. Finding the right spot on the shelf for the items. Making sure said items are the correct SIZE! Who knew ketchup came in 16, 24, 32, 44, AND 64-oz. bottles? And the most daunting aspect of this job? Speed.
While most of my fellow employees seemed to be putting their inventory on the shelves with the speed and agility of a chipmunk with a crack-cocaine addiction, I felt like a 1984 slothmobile who drank ice-cold molasses for engine fuel. Night after night I’d try and switch up my method for stocking the shelves, and night after night I’d fall behind, trying desperately to stay afloat amongst my own personal sea of pallets, feeling horribly guilty and tremendously inadequate when other employees had to come throw me a life preserver and pull me ashore to the Isle of I’m Done.
After struggling to accomplish the tasks set before me for about my first two weeks, a couple of the managers pulled me aside, and it was as if Morpheus himself was in the room with me. “You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are. Know you are.” And then proceeded to kick the crap out of me Kung Fu-style. Just kidding.
Off I went over the next few weeks, empowered by their encouragement, and determined to show them that I can do this, I worked harder than ever. I made a lot of improvement since then, but I have found myself plateauing as of late.
…And that’s when it hit me. I work hard. I try my best. (Ok, maybe not all the time, but I don’t intentionally slack off, either.) So why should I beat myself up when I fall short of perfection, letting an over glued box get the best of me, or taking a couple of extra minutes to hunt down that one flavor of Jell-O that keeps popping in and out of our universe, and, respectively, its location on the shelf? It’s so easy to come down on myself for not living up to my own expectations, but one thing I need to realize, is that
This is not who I am. Here in America, we place WAY too much importance on what it is we do for a living, what our job is, what activities we perform that earn us money, and we associate that occupation with our identity. We foolishly think that we are what we do. But as the character of Max in “Across the Universe” so beautifully put it, “Who you are defines what you do.” Our jobs should reflect our character, our individuality, our talents, not the other way around.
And this is profoundly connected to how we as Christians should view the world around us, too. You see, even though I don’t want to work at Wal-Mart for the rest of my career, I still have a job there now. And while my job is not my life, nor does it define me, the fact remains that I still have to put in a good amount of effort and dedication so that, not only will I continue to have a job there (i.e. not get myself fired for being lazy), but I can take this wonderful opportunity to go to work on the “inside”. I can make friends I wouldn’t make otherwise. I can touch lives I didn’t know existed. I can make a difference. And in terms of Christianity, we live in this world. While being here does not define who we are, (we should not be absorbed by our surrounding culture), and while living each day for the thrill of our natural, sinful desires for more money and more possessions most certainly isn’t all there is to life, we cannot simply hang up our hats, sit back, and watch the world spin around us as we spiral further and further down into a pit of asceticism and arrogance (as one usually begets the other). We absolutely need to be involved in the world around us, so that, first and foremost, they will not dismiss us as irrelevant but maybe take notice of when we step up to bat. We have an opportunity to work on the “inside” in this world. We can make friends we wouldn’t otherwise make. We can touch lives we never knew existed. We can make a difference.
Apathy can be a good thing, just in very small doses. Let’s not ignore our jobs or our neighbors completely, but let’s not focus so much on making more money, or trying so very hard to fit in to our surrounding cultures that we lose sight of pointing others toward God and His Son.
It’s freeing, isn’t it? Knowing you don’t have to place your entire self-worth in that next sale, or how many deliveries you make, or the total number of cars you can push through your drive-thru window in an hour? You are not merely the reflection of your job or the culture around you…but, at least in part, they should be reflections of you.
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